India has chosen to adopt WTO recommendations that curbs generic drug manufacturers from producing inexpensive drugs for all kinds of illnesses. Meanwhile, the WHO is predicting that the number of Indians infected with AIDS will explode in the coming years if that country does not strive to invest five and six percent of GDP into its national health system. As it is now, poor people in India cannot afford life extending drugs, either generic or high-priced western products. The World Bank estimates some ten million Indian's suffer serious heart conditions, 50 million are asthmatic and one in three Indian's are infected with tuberculosis. Millions of Indian's and African's have no hope of accessing drugs to extend their lives. Together with recent decision to overturn India's 1970's drug manufacturing laws enforcing patents on process but not product, tens of millions more of the world's sick and dying will be condemned to premature deaths by the invisible hand of laissez-faire economics. Tens of millions will be sacrificed to the free market gods.
WHO urges nations to bypass patent laws
MERAIAH FOLEY
Associated Press
NOUMEA, New Caledonia - Countries facing severe HIV and AIDS epidemics should consider using domestic or international trade rules to circumvent patent laws on anti-retroviral drug therapies, a World Health Organization official said Friday.
Dr. Bernard Fabre-Teste, WHO's adviser for the disease in the Western Pacific region, said the lack of low-cost AIDS drugs was "a key problem" for many developing countries.
"Which is why we need the possibility to have production of generic drugs by developing countries like India, China (and) Vietnam," Fabre-Teste told The Associated Press on the last day of a WHO conference in New Caledonia.
MERAIAH FOLEY Assoc Press
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posted 26 September 2005 05:17 AM
